Church should expose cover-ups: Senator

The Catholic Church would restore some credibility if it exposed child sex abuse cover-ups within the church and dealt with those involved, a Labor senator said today.

Senator George Campbell was non-committal on whether a royal commission should be held into allegations of sex abuse within the church.

But he said the church should hold its own investigation into the claims and expose anyone found responsible.

"I think they have to find a way of cleaning up their own house rather than trying to sweep the dirt under the carpet," Senator Campbell told reporters.

"They've got to find a way of exposing it and dealing with it themselves. ");document.write("

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He said the church would come out of such an exercise stronger than the way it looked now.

"The image that's being cast amongst the general community is that they have been involved in a massive cover-up from start to finish.

"And if they were to address it in a different form and expose some of these things that have been going on and deal with them themselves in a decisive way then people wouldn't be calling for royal commissions."

Calls for a royal commission into the church were renewed yesterday when Sydney Catholic Archbishop George Pell refused to stand down over claims he offered hush money to victims of sexual abuse in the church.

Dr Pell said he had nothing to hide and procedures he put in place in 1996 to deal with sexual abuse in the church were good procedures which basically worked well.

National Party Senator Ron Boswell said Dr Pell had cleared himself of any wrongdoing and it would be up to the church to ask for a royal commission if it thought it was appropriate.

Liberal Senator George Brandis said there was no urgency to make a decision on whether to conduct an inquiry into the church.

"We'll have to see what further the archbishop has to say about that and that's a decision that can be made a little into the future," he said.